Professor van Ypersele was awarded the IPF prize at the EEAwards

The Belgian Awards for Energy and Environment aims at rewarding innovative actors in the fields of energy and environment. Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele was awarded the International Polar Foundation special prize for more than 25 years of studies, works and commitment in the fields of climate change, energy and environment.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (Brussels, 1957) has a Ph. D. in Physics from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, 1986 with highest honours), based on work done at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR, Boulder, Colorado) on the effect of global warming on Antarctic sea ice.

With scientists from other disciplines (including applied sciences, economy and demography) he tries to develop an interdisciplinary perspective on the role of climate issues in the sustainable development debate. He has published many refereed research papers and popular works on these issues. He was a lead author for the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and was elected in 2002 Vice-Chair of one its three Working Groups.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele is a member of the Belgian Federal Council for Sustainable Development since 1993, and he chairs its Working Group on "Energy and Climate". He has also been science advisor in the Belgian delegations to a dozen United Nations conferences including Rio (1992), Berlin (1995), Kyoto (1997), Buenos Aires (1998), Marrakech (2001), Delhi (2002) and Montreal (2005). The federation of environmental NGOs "Interenvironnement-Wallonie" gave him in 1999 a "Palm for the environment", he was nominated in 2000 by the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) for the " Jean Teghem Prize " for scientific vulgarization, and he received in 2006 from the International Polar Foundation the Special Prize "Energy and Environment Award 2006".